Sunday, June 26, 2011

1. I still love you all and as I promised in an earlier life, still intend to guest post when the fancy strikes me.

2. This is one of those times.

3. Also last week, when I sent rob a guest comic post. The one about kidneys.

4. Sometimes we used to talk about whether xkcd was copying other comics on the internet. Defenders of xkcd said, no, it's a coincidence, it's easy to make the same jokes and I am sure xkcd hasn't heard of this "penny arcades" or whatever the comic is you say he copied. And then I always used to say, "well, if it's just a coincidence, he sure is acting weird about it" with weird defined as "refusing to acknowledge it and shunning anyone who brings it up, instead of just explaining that it was a coincidence." There's certainly no way to prove that an author deliberately stole another person's joke, and it's hardly fair to assume foul play without evidence. So, what I did was set up a general procedure that I (in my unlimited wisdom) recommend to webcomic artists in this situation: If you publish a comic that is suspiciously like another person's comic, it's probably an innocent mistake. But if it's brought to your attention, acknowledge the similarities, link to the original if you want to be extra classy, and get it out of the way. Alas, xkcd has never once done this (if i am wrong on this let me know but I am pretty sure). It just makes me suspicious. If there's really nothing wrong going on, why not just do the online equivalent of laughing it off? Rather than the online equivalent of going to your room and locking the door?

The point I'm trying to make with all this is that the proper response, as odd and labor-intensive as it may seem, does happen fairly often, and it happened most recently at Amazing Super Powers, with the President Kid comic (check the post below the comic). As it happens, neither one of the comics are all that funny so I'm probably going to forget all about this soon. But while I remember: nice work, ASP. Nice work.

5. I read an article the other day about humor research, specifically if one gender is funnier than the other. It's an interesting subject, since men generally dominate the world of comedy, but people tend to be offended if you suggest that men are inherently funnier than women. I don't know what the right answer is (I can certainly imagine social factors that make it easier for a man to be funnier, which would mean that there isn't anything inherently different but there is still a difference). Anyway, it's an interesting topic and one that the study in this article makes no progress on because I think it used a terrible measure of humor.

The study had men and women write captions for New Yorker cartoons, and I guess the logic for this was that the New Yorker is a respected magazine, and every week it has a "write-a-caption-for-this-comic" competition, so let's use that. But that's a terrible measure of how funny someone is! Those cartoons are hard to write captions for! Why, most weeks (when I remember to read it) I don't even think the finalists they pick for the contest are all that funny. In each cartoon, the drawing is already there, so you're forced to work with what they have. And for a lot of drawings, there just won't be too many options! Anyway, I appreciate the fact that they are trying to measure humor quantitatively - something I have always thought was possible, and indeed, if you dig deeply enough, an idea this entire blog is premised on - but I don't think this is the best way. At the very least, give people tons and tons of cartoons (New Yorker and others) and let them see which ones they can come up with good captions for. After all, if your three cartoons are Guys in an Office, Guys Stuck on the Beach, and Guys At Nice Restaurant, you better hope you can come up with something that fits those, or else be deemed Less Funny in the eyes of these researchers.

The old Dysfunctional Family Circus was pretty funny, and that was based on writing new captions for Family Circus cartoons. But a lot of those were based on simplified drawings that could be somewhat ambigious; so you could have your captions cleverly come up with new descriptions of what was actually going on (as opposed to New Yorker cartoons, which are pretty much always just quotes from one person to the other). The point is, there are better ways to do this, but it's a good start.

Predictions for why 917 sucks:"Well _I've_ never heard of that guy, because I'm not XKCD's target audience, therefore Randall is just being obscure again, GOOMH-baiting the nerds and trying to make them feel important about themselves for knowing who that is. Or he has a crush on one more obscure scientist, I can't decide. Maybe both. Also, porn star daughter Megan nipples har har!"

(2) It's frankly insulting when some two-bit hack like Randall tries to put his words into the mouth of an excellent scientist/author to make his writing sound less lame than it is (see also: dozens of other xkcd strips, although recently the Marie Curie one was particularly grating);

(3) Randall is just being obscure again, GOOMH-baiting the nerds and trying to make them feel important about themselves for knowing who that is;

(4) If Randall has a crush on Hofstadter, it is only because he uses Wikipedia to "decide" who his crushes are. Even as a preteen I recall more sophisticated processes leading to my first crushes;

(5) I like Randall because he reminds me that any other creative[tm] man I meet, no matter how obnoxious, could always be even worse while thinking he is better.

@abdelmadjid, the smart and discerning people who read this blog don't dream about Megan's breast milk and having a porn star daughter, therefore we're better than Randall. You, sir, are neglecting to remind us of this superiority. Please correct that, or I demand my money back.

Acronym's cute, but I feel like that was the joke Randall wanted to tell and then had to pad it with some nerd-pandering.

Also, does anyone else get disconcerted that when he "zooms" into panel 2, it seems that he didn't draw it larger he just expanded a regular image (or alternatively he drew it large with bigger pens and clunkier lines for no apparent reason)?

...Also, Carl, isn't this sort of post why you made webcomics.me? Your corporate empire, your choices, but I just -- I don't understand.

According to the Urban Dictionary:"Neckbeard":2. (n) Derogatory term for slovenly nerdy people who have no sense of hygene or grooming. Often related to hobbies such as card gaming, video gaming, anime, et. al.

I like it!He's no doubt quite filthy in bed. If one is not showered in crustations when one is getting the ride, what's the purpose?

Re: this Acrostic shit. No. Fuck that. Line ==\== word. Acrostics requires lines, in the plural, ie: verses, ie: stixous which you [a]cro. In his godawful prose there is no more than line in the entire goddamn 6-word autobiography, ie: one stixos. There are, however, 6 WORDS which end up forming an ACRONYM if you take select letters (ie: the first of each word). There is one line, so there is no acro happening on this goddamn stixos. In this whole livid piece of shit comic there is no acrostic except for the shittacular last panel which declares that Hofstadter is "WIN", but I doubt that is likely intentional.

Anyways, now that I've said, that please learn some English and/or Greek, or else if you still don't understand you can attend rudimentary first grade education where you are delightfully told by educators that your name will stand for something if you only write it down the page and make cutesy fucking adjectives besides each letter! ----------------------------------------@Gamer:this is the internet -- Facts and Proof Checking are labelled as just getting in the way of The Truth,You know?

If that doesn't work for you, get a better monitor! (this is not directed towards Gamer).

ravenzomg, for all the greek you just looked up on wikipedia, simple reformatting of the text in panel 2 would make in acrostic. however there is no way in hell to make it an acronym.

also probably the inventors of acrostics would have considered you a jackass. ancient greeks insisted on separation into lines because in ancient greek there were NO SPACES between words. english has spaces, which are more than adequate to create the effect.

you're like those people demanding that cars have saddles and run on hay.

@4:07 words forming another wordy-sounding thing = acronym. ISMETA sounds wordy. See also TLA = Three Letter Acronym. You don't say "oh it's not a three letter acronym though because when i type out Three Letter Acronym i'm typing out the expansion of the acronym not the acronym itself thus it's an acrostic".

If you alight from your aspie-based steam train of thought you'll see that (1) each word doesn't have your unique definition, non-overlapping with every other word; (2) English is not prescriptive anyway.

@Rob I've put it past a panel of experts in Internet argument and they all say that it is syntactically and semantically correct. One member explicitly rejects use of the breathing comma and another took the opportunity to let out a bloody stream of invective about the quality of xkcdsucks reviews.

Timofei, my lack of shame never let me own walls -- I am forced to live in a pile of shards and ash. THAT IS WHAT BEING IN THIS BLOG FEELS LIKE.

also i totally still stand by my whole "it's an acronym, fuckers" argument, even though i haven't a clue if i'm right or not, but luckily i am not an english major which i am okay with. enjoy your degree which qualifies you to serve coffee, p3d4nt5. ...zing.

captcha: etchear. omigod srsly, how do i stop my ear from etching? scretching does nothing }=[

"....i am not an english major which i am okay with. enjoy your degree which qualifies you to serve coffee, p3d4nt5. ...zing....."

I do not understand how possessing a degree in English renders you qualified to serve coffee. That may very well be all you are able to do for gainful employment, but I can't see how it makes you 'qualified'.

It is an acronym within a single acrostic. Personally, I would have written it to encapsulate a double acrostic, but then that's just me.

"....I am forced to live in a pile of shards and ash...."

The Raven is related to the Phoenix though, Innit? I reckon your weekly ablution rituals must be exciting.

@8:47: Citing Wikipedia is like writing something down on a scrap of paper then saying, "I'm right - it says so on this scrap of paper." If you don't want to be laughed at so loudly that your argument is drowned out, don't do it.

So Wikipedia critics, what should one cite to be credible? The internet is full of cranks with webpages promoting inaccurate bullshit. Without a priori knowledge of the background and agenda of the author of a cited webpage, it's impossible to know whether the webpage is credible or not. At worst, Wikipedia has the same problems as the rest of the internet. If citing Wikipedia is verboten in your world, all of you citations better be coming from .gov sites or hard copy references published by academic presses.

@1144 Since when citations not from references published by academic presses became ok?

The average web page is no more reliable than some guy down the pub blabbering on his favourite hobby horse. That you can type those thoughts on a keyboard and surround them with <html></html> says nothing whatever.

But people's increasing tendency to believe crap from strangers suggests that the world is getting stupider. So consider yourself trendy.

Since when "Oh thank god that meme got dredged up, here I thought we would be forced to come up with original conversation instead of brainlessly spamming the "post comment" button." suddenly became okay?

I have a book that says the average internet page is at least slightly more reliable than some guy blabbering in the pub. Unfortunately, since this reference is a hard copy, I can't just provide you with a link so you can examine the reference yourself and draw your own conclusions about the quality of the study. You'll just have to take my word for it, but hey; at least I'm talking about a book and not one of those horribly unreliable web-pages.

No, we're not talking about the average. The Wikipedia page on a particular subject is likely to be better (i.e. more informative, less biased, and with far more transparency) than the average page on that subject.

Of course some Wikipedia articles are significantly worse than other pages on the same subject. As a literate citizen of the information age, your job is to evaluate EVERY source of information to determine whether or not it's good. For the most part, Wikipedia is pretty good. Knee-jerk Wikipedia bashing suggests the basher is functionally illiterate and has no idea how to evaluate quality of information.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.